Bottle cap ink portraits

Sílvia Franco Santos's works of art are pure genius. And her canvas? Bottle caps.

Bottle caps? Art? yes!

Silva had got the idea by chance when she was teaching drawing in a class.

"I always used bottle caps as containers to mix the inks, especially for china-ink, one of the most used techniques for beginner students. But after a time using it, the caps usually ended up in the trash," she says.

"So that day I remember trying to scrap the first one and since then it has become an addiction. It is like a rudimentary/simplified process of the scratchboard technique, in which I specialized. For me, the caps have become some kind of cult objects that translate moments of spiritual transformation and images that inhabit my consciousness."